


Face the Day

by LeoOtherLands



Series: All the Broken Pieces [20]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, COVID-19, Domestic Violence, Fear, Fear of Death, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Kakashi is a good guy, M/M, Modern Era, Not between Kakashi and Iruka, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Sometimes, you aren't safer at home and Iruka knows it.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Umino Iruka
Series: All the Broken Pieces [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1386661
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Face the Day

**Author's Note:**

> Wish I was too dead to cry  
> My self-affliction fades  
> Stones to throw at my creator  
> Masochists to which I cater
> 
> You don't need to bother, I don't need to be  
> I'll keep slipping farther  
> But once I hold on, I won't let go til it bleeds
> 
> Wish I was too dead to care  
> If indeed I cared at all  
> Never had a voice to protest  
> So you fed me shit to digest  
> I wish I had a reason, my flaws are open season  
> For this, I gave up trying  
> One good turn deserves my dying
> 
> You don't need to bother, I don't need to be  
> I'll keep slipping farther  
> But once I hold on, I won't let go til it bleeds
> 
> Wish I'd died instead of lived  
> A zombie hides my face  
> Shell forgotten with its memories  
> Diaries left with cryptic entries
> 
> And you don't need to bother, I don't need to be  
> I'll keep slipping farther  
> But once I hold on, I won't let go til it bleeds
> 
> You don't need to bother, I don't need to be  
> I'll keep on slipping farther  
> But once I hold on  
> I'll never live down my deceit
> 
> [Bother - Stone Sour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-pXD0FXLQ8)

One of the strangest things to get used to after the COVID-19 outbreak was the sight of everyone in masks. It seemed in the space of days, it went from an unheard of to a fashion statement to have people walking into the few, still-open establishments in anything from full gas masks to those cute little, homemade, cloth ones. Those I found fascinating, with prints ranging from Tinker Bell and flowers to sports teams, dragons, and roses and skulls. People were imaginative and tired to cater to personal taste, even during a worldwide pandemic…

Kakashi just went with solid ash-gray, of course. The man was practical as well as eccentric and thought, if he was finally going to be allowed to hide his face on the job, he’d do it with something nondescript that would blend with his uniform. And match his eyes, maybe. Though, that could have been unintentional for all I knew. What I did understand was my co-worker made me a mask, as well, after I kept coming in, day after day, without one.

“Hey, Iruka,” he said, handing me the pretty, bronze and brown thing, “you should have one.”

“Oh, ah, sure. Thank you,” I said in turn, tucking it into my apron pocket. I was sure I wasn’t going to wear it, and judging by the flicker in my co-worker’s eyes, he knew it too.

But I did keep it, the mask. I kept in in my apron pocket most days, and in my jeans on all the others. Fingering it, as if for luck or reassurance. It was a comfort, that little piece of unworn cloth. And not because of some virus spanning the globe.

One of the most difficult things to get used to, though, were the people suddenly thanking me for doing my job. Because, somehow, my job had just become elevated from crappy, piece of shit retail work to essential service. And people, who once treated me like I wasn’t even there, like I was just part of the scenery, like the shelves, began to tell me things like, “Thank you for being here for us today.”

“Oh, ah, you’re welcome,” was all I could respond. After all, basically nothing in my schedule had changed. I’d never really gone out and done much anyway… What troubled me now were the simple things. The lack of hair salons… I could use a cut but had no where to go and no one to do if for me. And yet… the people… just kept treating me like I was doing something special.

If only they could understand…

Going out to work five out of every seven days in a week, risking my life and health to serve people donuts and bake them bread, while the world cowered, was only troublesome during the initial week the virus had hit _Konoha_. The week of the panic rush. That had been hard, oh so hard. People weren’t friendly and thankful then. They were a swarming, panicking mess who demanded and didn’t even see me as a human.

It nearly killed me and pained me unduly, pulling hurt tears from my eyes, while I tried to keep it together.

Because…

Because…

I was no empath, I didn’t feel the emotions of others well, but I could feel _that_. I could feel the combined and condensed panic of an entire nation, as its citizens swamped every store, including my little, family market, and emptied them of toilet paper and water and bread and ground hamburger, as if they’d never see the things again if they got slammed into ta two-week lockdown. Kakashi and I had been hopping then. Typing up big, yellow and black signs stating _Limit 1_ on all our shelves. Praying for a reprieve.

The anxiety of others only added to my own and made life a misery, but the panic had subsided, once people settled into the shelter-in-place quarantine and realized they were still going to be able to get food. They complained and fretted at the safer-at-home mandate, and said people like me, who still had a job to go to, were lucky in some ways, and thanked me, and that was odd but bearable.

I could do my job in relative peace again, even if the toilet paper shelves remained empty and I had to plot how to buy some directly after a load came in, just to get some. Even with stupid, little tings like that, I could drag myself to work and zone out for a few hours, without feeling like I was going to explode.

Because, in some ways, I _was_ lucky to still have a job to go to nearly every day. Even if that did put my health at risk.

There were some not so lucky, and I knew it and I wept for them.

My own health hardly concerned me, though. My thoughts on it could be basically summed up in one conversation I had with a customer shortly after the panic rush subsided.

“So, how do you feel about working with the public right now?” he’d asked over the donut case, as I packed up his order.

“Well, if I die, I die,” I’d responded. An unexpected thing to say, most likely, but as I said it in my typical, dry, unenthused, half-joking tone, the customer, a regular, only laughed, missing the seriousness in my broken smile and the shadows haunting my dark-chocolate eyes.

There was a part of me, a not so unrecognized and unacknowledged part of me, that admitted it would be alright if I got sick. If I died. I would be okay with that. Because I understood sometimes death wasn’t the worst thing. Sometimes life was what you feared. And that understanding, unvoiced or not, lingered with me day after day, while I watched people fear and back away from me, telling me to keep my distance. That understanding had me looking at them all with dead, pitying eyes because they didn’t understand. They didn’t know what it was to walk out their door with bare hands and face uncovered and feel they were breathing the free air as they faced the day. They didn’t get how it was to look steadily into the eye of the storm and say _come for me, save me_.

Maybe Kakashi got it to some extent. He worked with me every day. He saw my hollow eyes and blank expression. He saw me come in at dawn, face drawn and eyes sunk over dark circles, after yet another sleepless night, where I’d laid curled around my pillow, that little piece of cloth he’d given me tucked beneath it, hidden, clutched in my hand, while I bit my lip against the pain and tingling anxiety, while I listened for the sound of soft footstep or subtle curse in the dark.

He saw the bruises sometimes too.

I tried to hide those, but sometimes I just didn’t think of it, too zombied and strung out to think of it.

“Hey, Iruka,” he said once, gray eyes fixed on my left wrist, “how’d you get that?”

“Oh.” Automatically my right hand went to cover the mottled, purple-spotted patch on my inner wrist with my palm. “I’m not even sure. I just noticed it when I flipped my bathroom light on to brush my teeth this morning. I must have pinched myself moving some things around my apartment last night. It doesn’t hurt, it’s fine.” The half truth came easily to my mouth, but I knew he didn’t miss my flush of embarrassment, as I turned my face away.

I’d already had my scar on my face when I met Kakashi. Yeah… It had been sealed up already and easy to lie about. All the new things were harder.

Mostly because Kakashi was so observant. And kind. The man genuinely seemed to care when I was limping around with an equally limp smile on my face, lifelessness in my eyes, and something witty and sarcastic on my lips. Maybe his actual caring is what made me feel safe around him.

Maybe it was just because he never raised his voice.

Even when I bumbled along in a semiconscious daze, he didn’t complain or reprimand me. Just gave me kind eye smiles and gentle touches on the shoulders and back.

It was those touches, those soft, warm caresses that had me wondering what it would be like to be with a man like Kakashi. Had me thinking how nice it would be to feel safe in those arms, so I could sleep at night. Had me daydreaming about those lips, hiding behind gray cloth.

Would they be soft?

Would their owner push me up against some supply shelves in the back room, gently nudge his leg up between mine, and kiss me right, while he held me safe?

Pointless thoughts and probably inappropriate, I admitted, glancing away from his face. I would never be with Kakashi. Never have more of him than our hours spent together on the job. Never feel the support of his safety, except when I walked out of my door into the uncertainty of possible sickness and death.

Every day I knew it, and every day I savored the moments I had away from home, even if I was dead tired, even if I could wind up dead because of them.

I could wind up dead in my own home and, overall, I preferred to die of a virus. Being killed by someone else, someone who was supposed to love me, struck me as so unbearably embarrassing. It was funny, but I didn’t want to be so humiliated in death. I was shamed every day in life, often enough. I would rather choose my own way in death.

My thoughts stayed with me, as Kakashi wished me a good night, at the end of every shift. In particular, on those days when he added, “Have a good day off tomorrow, Iruka. Stay safe.”

“Yeah. Sure. You too, Kakashi. I worry about my people.”

And I did, of course I did. But I worried about myself, too.

Driving home on those nights, I’d often find myself listening to the radio, sometimes a familiar, quirky beat would start up and I’d turn up the volume, the lyrics to _Pinch Me_ by Barenaked Ladies filling my car, as I sang along.

_It's the perfect time of year_

_Somewhere far away from here_

_I feel fine enough, I guess_

_Considering everything's a mess…_

_Like a dream you try to remember but it's gone_

_(Pinch me) Then you try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn_

_(I'm still asleep) When you try to see the world, beyond your front door_

_(Please God)…_

_(I'm still asleep) Just to try to figure out what all this is for_

_On an evening such as this_

_It's hard to tell if I exist_

_If I pack the car and leave this town_

_Who'll notice that I'm not around…_

_Like a dream you try to remember but it's gone_

_(Pinch me) Then you try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn…_

_Pinch me, pinch me, cause I'm still asleep_

The words pulled tears from my eyes every night, as I parked my car in the drive and leaned, shaking, over the steering wheel. Hands clutching it and lip between my teeth because I was home and I didn’t want to go in. Oh, how I didn’t want to go in…

_Please God… tell me… that I'm still asleep._

**Author's Note:**

> [Pinch Me - Barenaked Ladies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3NE6UuaLiY)
> 
> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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